Florida Joker, Two Lawyers, a Hacker, and Rockstar Games Walk Into a Bar...

At the time of writing, the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer has exactly 165,139,002 views on YouTube. When it came out, it shattered all previous records for most views in 24 hours. Suffice it to say that the popularity of Rockstar Games' upcoming title is sky-high, to say the least. Never mind that GTA Online is raking in over $700 million yearly. Keep this in mind for later because it's relevant to our story.

Now, in the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, at precisely 1 minute 5 seconds, we see a young man with purple dye in his hair arrested and shown on a news bulletin. The real-life inspiration for that character is someone known as "Florida Joker." His real name is Lawrence Sullivan, and now he wants money from Rockstar; a lot of money.

After the GTA 6 trailer hit on December 5, three days later, Mr. Sullivan posted a video on social media about how he and Rockstar Games "gotta talk" because of his likeness depicted in the trailer. Furthermore, he felt he deserved "a mil or two."

A few days later, on December 12, he posted another video where he upped his "shakedown" money by a cool million dollars. Florida Joker said that thanks to him, Rockstar was profiting from the "biggest free marketing they got in their entire history of running this GTA game."

Apparently, selling over 190 million copies of GTA V and making over $700 million a year doesn't compare to the free publicity coming from him. Then he threatened that his lawyers, plural, are on the case with "hard evidence." Of course, nothing became of that threat aside from another video.

More recently, on December 27 and January 5, "The King of Miami" (his words) made two more videos about how, after speaking with his two lawyers, sent a letter and are taking "legal actions." Oh, and he upped the ante to 5 million dollars, then to $10 million. The new ultimatum is three days after his birthday on January 11.

The reason for all this headache is that he's supposedly getting harassed everywhere he goes, including but not limited to the airport, the streets, or while eating a pizza. People keep coming up to him asking for pictures with the "GTA Joker," and he's not having any of that while he's eating, he said.

A whole month of "free pulicity" as he put it, and all he got out of it was "suffering and pain and defamation of a character." Besides, "When did GTA ever make the news? Never," he said. If you think that's funny, then get ready for Florida Joker's best joke yet.

"And you not gonna lock me up, GTA. You ain't gonna put me in no psych ward. Keep playin' with me. Keep playin' with me. I'm gonna break that kid out the psych ward right now. Show you the real Joker. I'll break that kid out the psych ward and hack your system again. Keep playing."

He's obviously referring to Arion Kurtaj, the 18-year-old British man who hacked Rockstar Games in September 2022 and released videos and images from GTA VI while it was still in development. During the trial, Mr. Kurtaj was found guilty and sentenced to an "indefinite hospital order," as reported by Joe Tidy, BBC News journalist.

Mr. Sullivan appeared in a short interview on January 2 about the situation regarding Rockstar Games, where he said, "We will see what we can do. At least try to work with them. At least voice the character, maybe."

Now comes the biggest punchline! During the short interview, the Florida Joker disclosed that he doesn't work at all. "I don't do nothing. To be honest, my dad helps me," he said. At least, we now know why he wants $10 million so much.

Surprisingly, Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan actor, Roger Clark, is helping out Mr. Sullivan by offering advice on how social media works and how he could make money off it.

This is all extremely amusing, given the irony that Mr. Lawrence Sullivan is copying a character from the DC Universe, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. In other words, he's threatening to sue Rockstar Games because they copied him copying Joker from Batman. If that's not a South Park episode in the making, I don't know what is.

Now, another theory comes to mind. Maybe Florida Joker started out being serious about this whole thing. But after "Arthur" helped him with some advice, Mr. Sullivan could be escalating things on purpose now, just to grow his social media presence and finally earn some money on his own, rather than his current method.

Grand Theft Auto VI is expected to come out sometime in 2025, and from the looks of it, it could easily break historical sales records, much like GTA 5 did when it came out in September 2013, more than a decade ago.

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